The British government considers issuing bonds that are compliable with Sharia Law so that Muslim interested in investing can do so without qualms, as, under Sharia Law, interest is illegal.

While I can understand this to some degree (and could someone please tell me how the Arab banks work) I am afraid that I feel that this is yet another concession to the militant Muslims in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe). The UK and the EU are being held to ransom by terrorists and this from people who claim that they do not negotiate with terrorists. If this is not basically the same, and we must not forget that, as far as this author is aware, there are already twelve Sharia Law courts in this country while I do not know of any Jewish courts (aside from the fact that most law officers in the UK appear to be Jewish) and when the Rom want courts of their own, and that only in order to settle matters of the Culture, then they are told that they cannot.

As I have said before in some articles on this subject I am afraid to say that I can see the vision of the late Enoch Powell come true in the not so distant future if the authorities in the UK and the EU do not get some – and pardon my language – balls and put a stop to this pandering to terrorists.

Microsoft released last week urgent security patches for all it's still supported operating systems, including Vista, the latest operating system from the Microsoft stable, and the one which was tauted as the most safe and secure operating system ever. If this is the most secure ever then g-d help the world of ICT.

Can we really trust the claims and security of Vista and other Windows operating systems? Probably not and the price tags also do not help. With Vista there is still the rumor that if you install/reinstall the OS more than three times you have to purchase a new license. Sorry, pardon me again? So, if I have a PC and install it on there and have to reinstall it and then also own, say a laptop and install it on there and then buy a new PC, say, without an OS or say an older version of Windows and want to install Vista on it it would not work because I would have to have a new license. No wonder Bill Gates is a Billionaire and the likes of you and me are not, dear reader.

Vista OS and IE7 (IE = Internet Explorer) both are “persona non grata” at all government departments and their computers in both UK and USA. Wonder why? I guess because there are too many problems that those IT departments have already discovered.

So much, therefore, for all this tauting of what a great OS this Vista was going to be, all singing and all dancing and no more problems: it was going to be the bee's knee's of operating systems, so they claimed.

Well, I, like the FBI, MI5 and others, shall stick with XP Pro on the Windows PC and in mys case Firefox as the browser instead of IE6.

As I am well aware, Vista is meant to replace XP Pro entirely so I am sure that we will be told in about a year or three that there will be no more support fo XP and we MUST therefore switch all to Vista. I, for my part, hopefully, will by then have migrated completely and entirely over to Linux with its various distros.

According to the Daily Mail (UK newspaper) of April 1, 2007 (in the hope that this was no April Fools) a government study has revealed that schools in the UK are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons (I must say here that most schools never really taught it properly anyway) to avoid offending Muslim pupils.

The study found that teachers are reluctant to cover the Holocaust and the Nazi atrocities against Gypsies and Jews, and other groups of people, for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include the denial of the Holocaust. Oh dear! Poor darlings. In many EU countries the denial of the Holocaust is a crime. Maybe it should be made thus in the UK.

In addition to this it would appear that schools are also afraid to teach about the 11th century Crusades because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques about this subject.

I must say that I am having rather a hard time with this. I hate to admit this but I do.

Chris McGovern, History Education adviser to the to the former Tory government is right, in my opinion, when he said: “History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of the controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable.”

It is, and I have said this in a previous article already, high time that the British government and those of other EU countries stood up and said “Dosta!”, as we would say, that is to say; “Enough is enough!” and make is crystal clear to those who was to impose their views and laws onto other people in the countries where they have chose to live that this is not the way. If they are so eager to live under Sharia Law then what are they doing here in countries where there is another set of values in operation, be this in the EU, the USA, Canada or Australia/New Zealand? No one is forcing them to be here.

I am not saying that they mus assimilate, g-d forbid, and give up their beliefs and customs in the same way that we, the Rom, wish to be able to retain and maintain our Culture and Traditions and as I call for us, the Rom, to be allowed to live according to our ways and customs but without imposing that on the non-Romani society. The UK and the USA, for instance, are not Muslim countries. They have to come to understand that while they may not believe in the Holocaust or that the Holocaust has happened as it is being taught the Holocaust is nevertheless a fact of history and that not only Jews (which they seem to hate with a vengeance) were murdered by the Nazi extermination machinery but also other races, including and especially our Race, the Rom. (My apologies to all the Jews, but the Holocaust is not uniquely Jewish, however much their leadership may with to make it thus and neither were/are pogroms only something that has been/is committed against Jews; Gypsies too suffered many pogroms in the same way as Gypsies were part of the Holocaust – and no, we do not defile the memory of the Holocaust by wishing to be associated with it – and for the same reason as the Jews, namely that of Race).

The Crusades too are a fact and a part of history and must be according to the truth and if that offends some Muslims because, maybe, it shows, Saladin or whoever, in a less favorable light that he is portrayed by the local mosques then so be it and it is neither here nor there. The truth must be taught.

It is time for a resounding “Dosta!” from the governments and time to stop pandering to them out of fear; the fear of violent demonstrations, riots and attacks because they have been offended, like over the cartoons in the Danish newspapers. That is giving in to terror and then the governments might as well straight away surrender and let those people set up their laws and courts (some Muslim courts already exist in the UK). But when the Rom ask to be allowed to administer their own systems, even only in a small way, they they are told that this cannot be done. The Rom probably are too peaceful?

It is time, I am afraid to say, that the governments of the European Union had the same kind of courage as the government of Australia and woke up to the fact that while equality is indeed the aim to go for one cannot give one group more rights than other ones.

Recently whites in Holland, as much as in the UK, perceive, rightly or wrongly (but rightly more like) that, for instance, Muslims are being treated with kid gloves in everything and are being pandered to their demands whether this is with regards to dress, e.g. the Hijab, the full face veil, etc. or as regards to Christian festivals such as Christmas where this is now being basically banned as far as mentioning the word Christmas goes by the pc crowd, the wearing of the symbol of the cross, etc., lest it offend someone.

My own community, the Rom, on the other hand, are never given any sort of a 'break' like that and there are many Rom in the UK, for instance, who begin to think like the BNP in these matters in that they too reckon that the Muslims, for example, are given preference above all other ethnic groups.

Personally I must say that I do not blame them one bit for thinking in such a way.

All our politicians, unless they want to see a backlash happen, must take a leaf or ten out of the book of the Australian government under John Howard and be prepared to tell those Muslims that demand Sharia law, et al, to, if they don't like living in a democratic and free country to hop it and leave to a country there there is Sharia law. Shouldn't be too difficult to find one. I am sorry, but if in Rome then do as the Romans do. I doubt that we could not demand in Saudi Arabia, for instance, be treated different because we are not Muslims. The fact is that I know that we cannot demand to be treated differently. In this country they can chose not to drink alcohol; no one forces them to drink it. However, if a non-Muslim is in those Muslim countries he cannot – often not even in private in his own home – consume alcohol for it is illegal in those countries. So, there are no special rules in Saudi Arabia or Iran or such for non-Muslims. Why then should we make allowances in this country for them.

I do not have a problem with Muslims or any other religion or group. I am of an ethnic minority myself, namely of the Romani People, but I cannot see why any country should kowtow to one group and be dictated to under the treat of terror.

The Gypsy and the Jew have lived in this country and elsewhere for centuries and have never ever demanded this or that and they have lived their culture and religion alongside the general (British) public while the Muslims, especially the more-or-less 'radicalized' ones, want to make the UK and other (EU) countries where they live into countries with Sharia law. I have yet to hear a Jew complain about Christmas and the symbols. They just generally ignore them and get on with their own faith. Shame others cannot do the same. The Hindus and Sikhs neither have such attitudes. Only the Muslims, it would appear, have this problem.

If the Muslims in the UK, Australia, etc. want to live under Sharia law then, like PM Howard told them, they have the freedom to leave the country and move to one which has the law they desire. But the truth is that they do not want to live under the version of Sharia that has been set up by other countries; they wish to impose their version of Sharia law on other people, especially those that they consider infidels. This does not compute.

Everywhere on the Roma(ni) networks there is the talk about the International Roma Day (April 8) that is being celebrated. However, does it not, calling it the “International Roma Day” thereby, as far as I see, purposely, exclude Sinti and Cale?

If I am not mistaken it all started as the International Romani Day and in the last couple of years, like with the International Romani Union itself, who is but the inventor of the International Roma Day, the word Romani has been replaced by the word Roma. This was all done rather incremental and no one seems to have noticed and slowly but surely all those that think the big boys know better have begun calling themselves Roma even when they are Sinti (though the majority of them still resist) and the Romanichals and Cale. Many of the British Rom call themselves now Roma and it really makes me laugh, though at the same time I want to hit them with something heavy po shero, for the only Roma in the UK are those that have come over here in the last decades as asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia, Romani and Bulgaria and the former Czechoslovakia.

As they have the now the International Roma Day and thereby exclude, on purpose until such a time that the Sinti and others bow down to the altar of “Roma”, the Sinti and others, maybe we should start an International Romani Day or should we do an International Gypsy Day, LOL.

It does appear, to me at least, as if the PTB amongst the Roma(ni) “leadership” who run with the EU and such places will remove all Romani references soon and will try to force media, etc. to adopt the term Roma when referring to Gypsies (and Travellers). Yes, they will make it inclusive of the Travellers, for they already have included the Irish Travellers in the Roma and soon others will be added officially too. Then the word Roma will become synonymous with today's usage of Gypsy in the government circles such as in the UK and with the stroke of the pen, as it has been done here, all those Roma, then, that do not travel, with traveling in trailers being outlawed – wait for it, it is sooner or later going to happen – will no longer qualify for recognition as an ethnic group.

Torn Away, ForeverYvonne SleeAustraliadownloadable as a PDF from websitewww.geocities.com/daveauss/

Reviewed by M Veshengro Smith

While this book may work as a piece of badly researched romantic fiction on the Gypsy People, presenting us still in an entirely silly image to the Gohja eyes and minds, it does not work as a piece of factual history/family history of a Sinti family, not even by the farthest stretch of imagination.

Already in the introduction of the book, the author, claiming to be a Sintizza from Germany, now living in Australia, describes Gypsy caravans that are supposed to have been in Germany and encountered by her Grandmother as a child, but her description, in fact, of such caravans are that of Romanichal vardos in England. No Gypsy caravan in Germany - the ones called by some people “Holzrotell” - do ever have carvings of vines and the like, nor have they ever had. While there may have been some kind of painting or the other, most decorations were in the form of color outlines of windows, doors, and the like. The description she gives of the wagons her grandmother supposedly encountered does not tally with Gypsy wagons in Germany of that time or later.

We then, after the introduction, get treated to an even more imaginary story in the form of August's story who, as a baby, basically, was taken away to be fostered by Germans, does, so it claims, know Romanes. Not only is it claimed that he understands the Chib; nay, he even, so it says, is able to rokker it, to speak it, though not all that fluent. Rather strange, one can only say. I presume the author would claim that this be due to the Race Memory of the Gypsy People. While I strongly believe in the Race Memory it does not make it feasible though for someone who was torn away from his family while being a less than a year old babe in arms and not have heard the language around him nor grown up with it to be able to understand and speak it. It is a shame that people cannot keep a straight story.

Who is the writer trying to con?

In the part of the story where she is talking about Elsa's childhood she is mentioning an incident where a fellow girl at the school cut off Elsa's plait and the story continues with the child, supposedly, having been suspended from school for four weeks. While suspensions may have happened in schools in England and in Australia they did not, in those days, happen in German schools. Research goes a very long way when one is trying to tell tales that are to be believed. This is nearly as bad as when in the film Rambo III Apache helicopters and Cobras were used instead of Mil 24 Soviet ones.

I personally am having problems understanding why someone would concoct such a story but concocted it certainly is, as far as I as can be seen, for this author knows a thing or two about how things are as regards to Germany and its Gypsies, after WWII and also before and also as to the school system and other ways. Maybe the write of the book did not think that someone with such knowledge would encounter her book.

I would just like to add that I would not appreciate any threats by the author or her husband as happened before because of imaginary “attacks” upon her person by this author and our esteemed Kako Tom Odley. There is a rule amongst Rom and that is to speak the truth amongst one another. I do not care if a Romani fortune teller is trying to con the Gohja with whatever story but... amongst Rom Tatchipen should rule.